


to dream's end

by AerisaHale



Series: to dream's end [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25322632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AerisaHale/pseuds/AerisaHale
Summary: Their journey to find Quynh and Andromache is also their journey into each other's hearts.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: to dream's end [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845520
Comments: 6
Kudos: 326





	to dream's end

**Author's Note:**

> I have only seen the movie, and my historical knowledge is somewhat sketchy and based off of Google, so there may be errors. Feel free to point them out and I will edit them in the future. Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

Andromache and Quynh woke violently at the same time. This was only the second time Quynh has ever experienced this particular kind of dreams. She looked over Andromache’s shoulder from where she was pressed against the length of her back and found the woman writing in the dirt with her finger. They did not have the need to carry parchment and ink and Quynh, for once, longed to have it.

“There’s two more,” she whispered to the older woman. “Will we seek them now?”

“They will have to wait, for now. They are far away and we have work to finish here.”

Quynh pressed her lips together. “I think they may be together? I did not catch much.”

“One of them killed the other. Hopefully, they will realize.”

Andromache rolled over and wrapped her arms around Quynh, quickly falling back to sleep. They both dreamed of their former campaigns that night and every night for many years thereafter, interspersed with visions of war farther to the East.

\--

It takes years before Yusuf and Nicolo find love. When one begins a relationship with a week spent killing one another, over and over again as if that were their destiny, it takes time to move on. Joe wished he had known differently, but while he couldn’t change the past, he can do his best to ensure no one ever kills Nicky again.

Yusuf Al-Kaysani was a foot soldier who patrolled the walls of Jerusalem after Muslim occupation. The Pope and the Western Kings called the city theirs, though, and a war for it began. Nicolo di Genova was a holy man called by the Pope to recapture the city. He was filled with sacred, righteous purpose and it strengthened his resolve to rid their rightful lands of these heathenish people with their impure religions.

The first time Yusuf had met Nicolo it was too dark to remember his face. Yusuf was on patrol, had rounded a corner and come face to face with the man. There was a blade in his throat before he could sound the alarm. That was the first time Joe died. He remembered very little of it, until later when the dreams showed him Nicky's view of it. His first death had come and went quickly, and Yusuf would not remember Nicolo, not yet. Joe would find out later that Nicky was also killed that day, by soldiers deeper in the city.

Yusuf woke on the ground, several other dead patrolmen around him. He groaned and rolled himself into a sitting position. The sun was high in the sky and the dead couldn’t have been more than a day old. He ran his hands over his body, trying to feel for the wound that had felled him but found none. Chalking it up to being knocked unconscious, he made his way back into the city, found his barracks and slept for two days.

The dreams began.

\--

After that, his commanding officer moved Yusuf from patrol to scouting. It was on one of these missions that he met the man from his dreams. It would be his first memory of Nicolo. Yusuf was hidden in a bush, watching the enemy dine around a fire at a camp that was hastily constructed and easy to deconstruct.

His team waited until they slept, taking the night watchman out first. Yusuf searched each tent, slitting the throats of his enemy as he went. It was within the fifth tent he searched that he found Nicolo, eyes closed, breath even. He must have watched too long, for when he went to slit the man’s throat, his eyes opened but it was too late. Yusuf watched the life drain from his eyes and wondered if the dreams would end.

The dreams did not end.

\--

Within two short years, Yusuf had risen quickly to General. However, while Jerusalem still stood in Muslim hands, the Christian Crusaders were gaining ground. It came down to one last battle. The Seljuk Empire was about to lose Jerusalem. Ferocity and practice brought Yusuf to the center of the fighting, which is where he met the man in his dreams once more. The man he thought he had killed.

Nicolo, stabbed by Yusuf and dying, lunged forward to take him into death with him. They lay perpendicular to one another, bleeding out in the mud as the battle continued to rage around them. Nicolo spoke in Yusuf’s language, “I’ve killed you before, how is that?”

Yusuf coughed up blood and barked out, “I’ve killed _you_ before, how is that?”

They did not have enough life left to continue that conversation as death took them.

Yusuf woke with a groan as he felt his body knitting itself back together. As his eyes found vision, he could see Nicolo’s wounds forming back together just as he did. Allah had given him another chance to kill his enemy and he would not waste that. He did not spare much thought as to why his enemy kept being given life. Not yet.

They fought. They fought and they died. They fought and they died, over and over again. It took seven days of fighting and dying before things changed. Yusuf returned to life for the ninth time, sooner than his enemy. The last eight times, he had found his sword and begun again but not this time. This time, he took his enemy’s blade and sat with both as he waited for his enemy to join him once again. Yusuf was certain he would.

The ground around them was littered in blood, grime, sweat, mud, bodies and their various hacked off bits. Men still fought around them as the final battle raged on. No one paid them any special attention, too focused to notice the same people come back to life and fight, again and again.

He watched the life come back to Nicolo’s eyes and tightened his grip on both their blades. He saw the Italian man search for his blade before finding it held in Yusuf's lap. He then looked to up, met Yusuf's eyes. The Turkish man just sat there, no aggression in his posture. This time, Nicolo too, just sat there and surveyed the carnage around them.

“We are not like other men, are we?” he asked after a while, in Turkish. He had never understood the point of the foreign language lessons as a child, but he was suddenly grateful. “I had thought God kept giving me chances to kill you, to kill my enemy and yet you stand before me again, the same as I.”

“I can say the same. I thought Allah bestowed me a gift, but why would He give the same to my enemy?”

A different Crusader came bearing down from behind him, Yusuf’s only warning was the diverted attention of Nicolo before he was beheaded. It took longer for him to come back from that one, and his immortal enemy was nowhere to be found. It appeared as if the battle had moved on, as well.

Yusuf did not return to the army. He wanted answers and decided he would find them within his dreams.

\--

Yusuf traveled according to the hints from his dreams. He had decided that to find his answers he needed to find the women from them. He dreamt of a foreign land, that worshipped many Gods and fought in heavy-looking armor. It took several months for him to piece together that he needed to go to Japan.

He spent those several months traveling through the territory of the Song Dynasty, what would eventually come to be known as China. He made money through bodyguarding and other enforcing jobs throughout the territory. It was difficult as a dark-skinned, foreign man to find work, but his skills were arguably exceptional enough to make an adequate amount of people to look past it.

He had saved up enough money to secure passage across the ocean to the port city of Hyogo no Tsu. He agreed to train some of the sailors in exchange for meals on the trip. The trip took a month but went smoothly. They encountered pirates once, towards the end, and Yusuf was able to demonstrate how well his training was going. The Captain was so impressed that he gifted Yusuf with a ring that he assured the Turkish man would gain him passage anywhere he needed to go, should he find need of it.

Yusuf began his journey through Japan as his dreams grew stronger and more vivid.

\--

Quynh woke to find Andromache tending the fire of their camp. Jerusalem had fallen to the Crusaders in her dreams. The two men had resolved to find them, though they didn’t seem to be together. She looked to her partner.

“It won’t be long now. They will find us soon,” Andromache answered the unspoken question in the Korean woman’s eyes.

Quynh twisted her hair over one shoulder and relaxed back into the fur beneath her. “At least they seem finished with killing one another.”

\--

He’d taken a job guarding a merchant’s goods that needed to pass through a well-known Thieves’ Road. He didn’t expect to find the man he dreamed of there, another mercenary in the contingent. His hair was longer, tied back and mostly hidden under the wide brim of a kasa hat, popular in the region. Something different passed between them when their eyes met. His— _Former_? He was still deciding—enemy nodded at him and he nodded back.

The caravan took off as the sun began to brighten the sky. The journey was expected to take six days. The first two days were quiet. Yusuf stayed as far from Nicolo as he could, which was not a difficult task when they were each assigned to different ends of the caravan. They kept to themselves during the day.

The camped at night, four of the twelve men on guard rotation while the others slept. This was the hardest time to avoid the Italian man. Yusuf imagined he was picked for being foreign. He was paired with Nicolo and they were forced to walk patrols together. He further guessed this was because they were both the only foreign men in the group. The first two nights were done in silence.

The third night, about two hours after the camp had settled for bed, Yusuf walked silently beside Nicolo once again. He was growing fond of the other man's silent presence. He'd killed this man in a multitude of ways and yet, here they both stood, alive and, so it seemed, seeking the same goal. It was an odd comfort in a strange land. A sound caught Yusuf's attention and he held a finger up, Nicolo coming to a halt beside him. He moved toward the sound, hearing Nicolo close behind. As he neared a large tree at the southern edge of the camp, he drew his sword and rounded behind the rough trunk but it was too late.

There was a sword in his stomach and hot blood running down his front. He knew he was going to die. Using the surprise to his advantage, he grabbed the blade and pulled it deeper into himself, drawing his attacker closer, too. He wrapped a hand around the man's back and threw himself forward and used his weight to bury the steel to the hilt in the attacker's chest.

Sounds of fighting filled his ears for several moments, somewhere nearby, before coming to an end. He was rolled off of the dead man beneath him, the blade buried in his stomach falling from lifeless hands. For the first time since they had known each other, Nicolo looked horrified at his death. The light-skinned man gripped the blade and yanked it from him as Yusuf cried out in both pain and surprise. The intensity of it threw him into unconsciousness and then death.

When he woke, alive and healed once again, he found a dozen dead men littering the ground around him. A bit closer to the camp was the Italian man who was once his enemy. As he fell beside him, he decided he couldn’t call this man his enemy anymore. Not when he rolled his lifeless corpse over and slapped his cheeks until he came to life once more. Once he was sure the man was alive again, he stood and moved to the camp and met the night guards from the northern half of the camp and explained the attack.

The three of them roused the rest of the guard and split themselves into groups to search the surrounding area while the merchants inventoried their goods to ensure nothing had been lost. By the time Yusuf’s group reached the area they were attacked, Nicolo was getting to his feet.

“The two of you did this?” the leader of their group asked, incredulous. It took Yusuf a moment to translate the language he was still learning and before Yusuf could indicate it was only the Italian man, Nicolo had said in much better Japanese than Yusuf could have, “Yes, we got the jump on them and then their friends joined in. We were lucky they were poorly trained.”

Nicolo shot Yusuf a look and the Turkish man wisely kept his mouth closed and simply nodded.

The next day, Yusuf’s mind would be filled with the horrified look on Nicolo’s face as he died. Things had changed between them and fate would keep putting them together it seemed. He realized this was his second death since Nicolo had last taken it on a battlefield outside of Jerusalem and it suddenly felt like he’d lived a thousand years.

That night, they were given a break from patrol and the choicest portion of the dinner served that night. Yusuf ate silently while Nicolo, with his much better command of the local language, chatted with their compatriots. Yusuf slept well that night, his belly full of good food and his mind filled with the soft tone of Nicolo’s voice.

The fifth night found them on patrol again. It had been quiet since the first attack, but they stayed alert and followed the perimeter of the camp diligently. It was silent, as before, until Yusuf could hold his tongue no longer and asked in his mother tongue, “What is your name?”

It was a strangely formal question for two people who were very familiar with each other in a deathly sort of way. It was a strange sort of intimacy, having taken the life of the same man several times over. The question made Nicolo’s lips quirk into a smile, though, and Yusuf could not focus on what he said the first time as he memorized the lines his lips formed. “I apologize, what was that?”

“Nicolo. Nicolo di Genova.”

Yusuf gave his name in return and they walked in silence for some time longer before Yusuf offers, “I have dreamt of you, for years.”

“Two women, as well. They fight like…” Nicolo trailed off but confirmed Yusuf’s thoughts, that they shared these dreams.

“Like they were born to fight, and to fight together,” Yusuf finished.

“Is that our fate? We are to fight together? But for which side? We are enemies!” Nicolo laughed at the absurdity.

“Can you really say that we are still enemies? On the same team, in this foreign land? I can’t say why we have this gift, but I cannot see it being for either of our peoples. Not when we stood as enemies with the same immortality.”

“If I dreamt of you and we have both dreamt of Andromache and Quynh, perhaps we are meant to find them? Perhaps they have the answers we do not.”

The dreams continued.

\--

They traveled together after that, sharing their dreams of Quynh and Andromache, searching for the pieces that would lead them to the women. They shared rooms as they traveled and Yusuf found himself drawn more and more toward the man. They talked as they traveled, having little else to do. Among other topics, they shared their upbringing, so opposite of each other.

“I was taught to hate your people. Every way I’ve been taught to kill was to be used on your people,” Nicolo said one lazy day between jobs that they lounged in the sun and drank a local alcohol. “But I find that hate more and more misplaced as I get to know you.”

Yusuf took a long sip of his drink. “Perhaps we have been given this gift to see past our people’s hate. I hated you, once, but now I'd be rather sad not to see you again."

“I think I will always find my way back to you, in death and in life,” Nicolo said quietly and it sounded like an admission.

Yusuf let it sit comfortably between them as they continued to sip their sake.

\--

After another three weeks of travel, they have run their money thin and haggled a discount at an inn for purchasing a room with one bed and the inn will provide a mat for one of the men to sleep on. They spend the day searching for a job for one or both of them to take on. They end up finding a delivery job, as highly dangerous as it is highly paying, but heading in the same direction that they are, so they accept.

The package is secure in Yusuf’s arms, for the moment and they are amicably bickering over who gets to sleep in the bed as they make their way back to their room. They aren’t prepared when they are attacked. A blade to the back of the leg brings Yusuf down quickly. He threw the package towards Nicolo as a second man pressed in close to him. Nicolo was fending off three attackers as best he could.

The Italian man glanced to the package and then to Yusuf holding his useless leg. The tendons had been severed. He drew his blade and dragged himself to his feet, anyway. “Take the package and go, Nicolo.”

“You’ll be killed,” Nicolo stressed as he slashed forward but was parried away as another blade aimed towards his side. He avoided it, but just barely. They aren't in a good position.

“Take the package and go. We need the money,” Yusuf repeated and sent Nicolo a reassuring grin. “Don’t worry. I will find you.”

Nicolo doesn’t hesitate as he grabbed the package and turned to run. It warmed a part of Yusuf’s heart to see the lack of delay and doesn’t waste time charging the men who turned to chase after the Italian man. He was half-dragging his leg behind him but it doesn’t stop him from getting a blade into the heart of one of the attackers through his back. Hearing his comrade fall, the other pursuer turned and grinned at the easy fight Yusuf must have presented.

When one of the men moved to impale him, Yusuf let him, falling back into the man who tried to grab for him, skewering the both of them. In a move that mimicked the one that he used in the fight against raiders on the caravan, he held the blade impaled in himself and forced the three of them into a heap on the group, aiming his blade upward and letting gravity stab the man above him. He did not last much longer and the world goes black.

\--

Yusuf didn’t come back to life until the sword was pulled from him as his lifeless body was laid on a cart, ready to slide into a cremation oven. He found life once again in time to jam his foot into the closing door. He quickly shimmied down and out of the oven, to be met with the bug-eyed mortician who was muttering prayers to himself. Yusuf caught the word demon in there.

“Clothes?” Yusuf asked and the man pointed. He dressed himself quickly and made his way back to the inn. The innkeeper informed him that Nicolo had already left, but had paid to keep Yusuf's horse waiting for him in the stable. He quickly saddled the sweet mare and headed off after the Italian man.

Yusuf caught up to the last two of their attackers in half a day’s time. He was very pleased by how surprised they were to see him and used that to his advantage to quickly dispatch them into death. It only took another few hours to catch up with Nicolo, as he traveled as quickly as he could without driving his horse into floundering.

When Nicolo heard the hoofbeats behind him, he’d turned in his saddle and upon recognizing the man atop the horse, he’d drawn to a stop and dismounted. He was grinning and clearly relieved. Yusuf also dismounted and found himself falling toward the other man, wrapping his arms around him. “I told you I’d find you.”

"It had been a day, I was sure..." Nicolo started to say but couldn't finish the thought. Instead, he kissed Yusuf for the first time in their many lives, covered in dirt and sweat from fighting and riding. Yusuf was covered in blood and smelled of death but none of this stopped them from deepening the kiss. It felt like coming home.

\--

The package was delivered and they were paid well. From then on, they spent their nights camped together, forgoing the pleasantries of an inn just to stay pressed as tightly together as they could. They made love at their leisure, without the worry of discovery. They unlearned old prejudices as they learned each other, mind and body. All the while, the dreams grew increasingly persistent.

Several months later found Yusuf and Nicolo in a medium-sized city, searching for supplies to carry them further north. Yusuf bartered with the shop owner in his much-improved Japanese, in the corner of a marketplace. A couple others were browsing his wares. People chattered around them, haggling for food, clothes, and supplies. Children laughed and darted around people’s legs.

They’d been in this city for a few days and overall had grown accustomed to this country’s way of life. One of the universal truths was the noise generated by a city’s center as people went about their lives. They had been in town long enough that no one batted an eye at the foreign men. So, it was jarring when everything fell silent.

The two men turned around to see what had caused everyone to fall quiet. Two warrior women—an even more foreign anomaly than dark-skinned and white-skinned men—had entered the square, both on horseback. Yusuf met Andromache's eyes and something inside him slotted into place. He glanced to Nicolo beside him and saw his lips upturned at the corners, the same smile he showed Yusuf when they held each other in the light of a dying campfire.

The dreams finally stopped.


End file.
